Giant baby born in Mexico

Hefty

Updated A Mexican woman has given birth to an unusually large baby. Dubbed "Super Tonio", the baby weighed in at a massive 6.6kg when he was delivered by staff at the Jesus Kumate Rodriguez hospital in Cancun, Mexico.

For the uninitiated, it is worth pointing out that an average baby weighs around 7lbs, or 3.2kg at birth. These average babies don't get to be 14lbs until they are around four months old.

For the initiated: yes, it was a c-section. You can stop wincing now.

The world record for big babies is held by an unnamed Canadian baby, who was born in 1879 and lived for just 11 hours. At birth, it weighed a massive 10.5kg - making it roughly the size of an average 14 month old.

The heaviest healthy baby ever born was Italian, born in 1955, weighing in at 10.2kg.

Often babies grow unusually large because the mother has poorly controlled diabetes. In these cases, too much glucose ends up in the foetus's blood. This triggers an increase in insulin production by its pancreas, which in turn prompts the developing foetus to make more fat, which is laid down mostly in the upper body.

It is not clear if this is the case here, but it was certainly behind the enormousness of Brazillian baby Ademilton dos Santos, who weighed in at 7.7kg when he was born in 2005. ®

Bootnote: Our apologies to readers who may have seen an earlier version of this story, which suggested that Ademilton was born this year. And our apologies to Ademilton, who is now two, and probably wouldn't take too kindly to us getting this wrong.